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This is the Sky tower and city harbour walking tour programme. You will be guided to walk from AUT, through the Aotea Centre to see the town hall and the plaza large Maori archway. A few hundred metres to St Patrick’s cathedral and then to the Sky tower where you will ascend to the viewing platform levels.

The Sky Tower stands at 328 meters and is New Zealand’s tallest man-made structure and the tallest man-made structure in the southern hemisphere. The building serves as a telecommunications tower and is part of SKYCITY Auckland, a complex which includes a casino and hotel as well as the observation deck. Visitors go to the top of the building in glass-fronted elevators and there they can take in the views from three viewing platforms. From the top you have views for 80km in every direction. On Level 60 (Sky Deck) sections of the main observation level floor are transparent and you can see right down to the ground 186 meters below. The upper Skydeck is just below the main antenna at 220 meters high.

If you want to spend more time at the top of Sky Tower then you can dine at Peter Gordon’s The Sugar Club restaurant or have a light meal at the Sky Café or Orbit, the city’s only revolving restaurant. Thrill seekers can try the SkyJump, leaping off the building (while attached to a safety harness) or the SkyWalk, walking around on the outside of the building on a 1.2 meter wide platform 192 meters from the ground. Sometimes the tower is lit up with colours to honour a special event, national holiday, and charity or community initiatives.

After the Sky tower visit, you will walk down Queens Street past the N to Z shop to Britomart station.

You will then carry on to the water front and follow the water to the left. Queen Street Wharf is where the Maori tribes came in, some of the best navigators in the world. If you continue along the waterfront, you will get to the ferry terminal, from here there are ferries to many of the Hauraki Gulf Islands. There are 50 volcanoes in Auckland, some of which make up the islands in the Hauraki Gulf. The Auckland Ferry Building was originally completed in 1912. If you walk down the pier, you will get to Shed 10, which is the first place Maori started to export from.

From here you will carry on along the waterfront until you get to the viaduct basin. Here there are lots of nice restaurants, as well as berths for up to 150 boats. These include America’s Cup yachts which you can book a sailing experience on. We will then continue, over the Wynyard Crossing, from which you can look back at the Viaduct Basin, to Wynyard Quarter, past the fish markets, to Silo Park. Here you can either hang out in the park, find a nice place to eat, or check out the current art exhibition “Into the Underworld”.